Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcy
I don't think .lit support is feasible, given that it is a proprietary format owned by Microsoft and they haven't given permission to anyone to write a program to display it on a system other than Windows. You need to be realistic when asking for features.
-Marcy
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Beg to differ ma'am.
MS Reader DRM is MS proprietary but the LIT format itself is fully documented and open to use by others. That is precisely why Calibre and other apps can convert to/from LIT in the first place.
The Hanlin V3 and V5 ereaders (sold under many different names) have for several years offered LIT support. Flaky but real. No lawsuit has ensued.
There is also at least one commercial application, TinyReader from Golden Crater Software that supports LIT format. (I have it installed on my WinMo Smartphone.) Again, no lawsuit after 7+ years on the market.
http://www.goldencrater.com/
And then there is Stanza on PC and IPxx that also supports LIT. Ditto.
(MS isn't half as demonic as they're made out to be, you know...)
LIT in itself is simply OpenEbook in a Microsoft-defined compression wrapper.
As such it is a precursor of sorts to ePub, minus the attempts to graft PDF features onto OpenEbook, that give us ePub "wonders" such as hard-wired margins, non replaceable fonts, and all-image ePubs.
Add in that the LIT spec features a standard dictionary format that is fully documented in multiple languages and includes the free converter tools and that free and commercial dictionaries exist in LIT format for most major languages and the argument can be made that LIT is a more mature format than ePub at its current state of development. No shame there; ePub is barely a year old while LIT is over a decade old. Also, it doesn't hurt that MS Reader on PC and Pocket PC has excellent typography.X
The relevant fact here is that there are entire libraries' worth of ebooks in LIT format (The University of Virginia's eText collection comes to mind; MS helped fund their conversion efforts early in the last decade) and that a lot of us coming to eInk readers from the PDA world are deeply vested in commercial ebooks in LIT format. To such as us, LIT support is a lifeline and a selling point (I, for one, bought my BeBook solely because of its LIT support at a time *before* Calibre supported LIT conversion).
Now, given the MS-phobia prevalent in the publishing industry and LINUX community, I know the MS taint makes it unlikely that we'll soon see a LIT reader app on another LINUX-based system (the Hanlin one hasn't been updated in over a year), but to wistfully ask for one is hardly unrealistic; the source code for opening LITs into their internal OEB file structure is readily available and so is the code for OEB rendering in LINUX so the project is quite feasible in *technical* terms.
Whether it is a feasible use of the time and skills of the Guys in Kiev(tm) is a Pocketbook Global management decision. I'm not holding my breath (hence my blue sky comment) but I'm not giving up the hope that there's enough of us old PDA-reader veterans out there to make it worth their time to add LIT support.
After all, "maybe the horse will sing".
Fair'nough?
Peace!
